My month in Nebraska

My take on Nebraska

where I went this month

Nebraska's land

It felt like I did a lot of hard driving but this map looks like I didn't go much of anywhere.  Nebraska is the 16th largest state, but it doesn't have the physical barriers like California's mountains to use as an excuse.  Still, I did the best I could and just ran out of time.

I should have looked more closely at the research I did before I started this trip.  If I had, I'd have known that both those national forests I sneered at (without having seen) were manmade.  In fact, the Nebraska National Forest is the largest planted forest in the country.  In 1902, thousands of Ponderosa Pine seedlings were planted, hoping it would result in an easy source of lumber that would entice settlers to the region.  

I expected Nebraska to be mostly flat and was surprised to find that it's definitely not.  It's true that there isn't much in the way of mountains (none), and for much of the state the sandhills provide the only relief.  But the lowest point - 840' - is on the Missouri River at the southeast border with Kansas; the highest point - 5,424' - is Panorama Point in the far southwest near Wyoming.  That's a big difference.  All on the southern edge of the state, but the RV's AC told me we were definitely climbing when we went west.  Lots of hills in the western part of the state, too, not even counting the buttes.  Not what I expected.

Nebraska is the only state to lie entirely in the drainage area of the Missouri River.  All the state's rivers and streams flow into it.  Many of its water bodies are shallow - as I thought when I was at Lake McConaughy, the largest manmade lake.  Actually, it's the largest lake, period, because though there are hundreds of natural lakes, they're all small.

Dating back to the early European settlers, the Platte River (the state's most important) was said to be "a mile wide and an inch deep."  This means it floods easily during heavy rain, as do the other shallow water areas.

In fact, Nebraska is a sort of crossroads for weather events: floods, droughts, blizzards, hailstorms, violent thunderstorms, Chinook winds off the Rockies, tornadoes.  This fact is a product of warm humid air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico and colliding with cool dry air from the Rockies and Canada.  It's a sitting duck.

Farms and ranches make up 95% of Nebraska's land use.  It's certainly not being used for people to live on: the state ranks 37th among the states for population.  Coupled with its large land area, that makes Nebraska rank 43rd in population density.  The 2020 census said there were fewer than 2,000,000 people living here.  So if you're looking for room to breathe, this is a good place to look.

Nebraska's people

I met a lot of really nice people here, almost all very accommodating and kind in the face of my total disorganization (thanks to the kitten acquisition).  I ran into only one unpleasant person in the whole month (that KOA lady in Ogallala) while everyone else was pleasant and willing to talk.

Oddly, very few of them told me they liked where they lived; almost everyone said they'd much rather be living elsewhere, though none of them specified an alternative.  They all had different reasons - too big, too small, nothing to do, no shops stayed long, et cetera.  They just didn't like whichever town they were in.  It didn't seem to matter if they lived in a large town or small one.  Actually, my cousin in Bellevue was one of the few who really like where she lived.  And I thought Omaha seemed like a nice place to live.

I thought it was interesting that almost every small town had its own little RV campground.  I haven't seen that anywhere else.  Even the really small ones - remember that campground I found in Cody, pop. 154?  Makes me wonder why towns in other states don't do this.  It shows a creative approach to bringing in some tourist money without going to a lot of expense.

Driving in Nebraska

The reason it felt like I covered more of the state than I did was that driving on these roads is hard.  Nebraska shares a kinship with Montana for its acceptance of unpaved roads (unlike Texas, for instance, which has paved everything that hasn't actually been planted on).  And even the paved ones are not in good shape, are bumpy and hard to drive on.  I thought this was an interesting and attractive state but just not much fun to drive in.  A shame.

There were some license plates that didn't look like this - most notably those supporting the University of Nebraska's football team.  But this is the one I saw almost everywhere.

What I didn't see that I wanted to see

My daily posts are full of things I missed and I won't repeat them here.  But in addition, I'd wanted to get up to the Oglala National Grassland in the far northwestern corner and to Panorama Point in the far southwestern corner.

The National Museum of Roller Skating is in Lincoln, admission is free, and it sounds like fun.  I just didn't have time for it.

But the main thing I'd have liked to see wasn't available: the Sandhill Crane migration that arrives in March near Grand Island on the Platte River.  One of the best viewing spots is the Fort Kearney State Recreation Area not far southwest of Grand Island.  I think a sight like that would be worth a separate trip here, just to see it.

My conclusion

I don't think I've mentioned before that the one souvenir I've gotten in every state is a t-shirt.  They're light, easy to store, and useful - some of them I wear pretty often.  They don't even all mention the state's name, but they have something that reminds me of my time there.

This one will be at the top of my favorites list for its brutal honesty.  "Nebraska.  Honestly, it's not for everyone."  So, honestly, I don't think I could sum up my impression of Nebraska any clearer than that.

Nebraska - Days 30 & 31 - in the campground

Gretna/West Omaha KOA, Gretna

Sunday, 30 and Monday, 31 October 2022

I spent all day Sunday finishing and posting the blog entries I'd drafted, from the 15th through the 21st.  Monday I wrote and posted 2 more, so I'm able to finish the state only a week behind, much better than the last few states, though still not good.

Also on Monday I did the usual chores: changed the sheets, did laundry, cleaned the windows, planned my driving route to Iowa - like that.  None of it particularly onerous (though doing the laundry always seems to take a lot out of me - hauling it to the laundry facilities isn't like having a machine in your own house) but it all took time.

Monday was Halloween which I celebrated in my usual way: pizza and Soapdish.  Yes it's completely dumb, but it's totally entertaining.  I didn't realize until much later that I hadn't seen a single kid dressed up in costume.  And then I remembered that this same KOA was advertising an early Halloween celebration for the weekend after I was here before.  The whole campground was decked out in Halloween decorations, all of which were gone by the time I got back here.  Glad I missed it.  I enjoyed having the kids come by when I lived in a house, but I'm not comfortable with it when I'm in a camper.  Not sure what the difference is, but it feels different.

The first night here they'd put me in what seemed to be a nice spot, but it turned out to have a definite slope to it and I barely got any sleep.  I noticed that half the campsites were empty when I got up in the morning and asked to be moved to one of those.  But the manager said they'd cut off power to a whole row of sites and cut the water to a second row.  But I pointed out I didn't have the water attached at my current site and the non-water ones looked much more level, so she moved me.  Really nice of her, actually, and she gave me a partial refund because I wasn't getting full hookups any more.

It's only been 3 weeks since I was here last, so it seems odd how different things are - no Halloween, no crowded campground.  We couldn't even find anybody to come play with Dext in the dog park.  A couple of dogs passed by but their owners said they didn't like other dogs much, which was too bad.

Nebraska - Day 29 - via small towns to Gretna again

Gretna/West Omaha KOA, Gretna

Saturday, 29 October 2022

Lincoln and Omaha are less than an hour apart so I added a what-you-might-call scenic route to today's drive.  When I came east from Grand Island to Lincoln, I took the interstate because I'd wanted to get to the state museum early.  But according to the map I'd missed a number of small towns on the parallel US highway, so I backtracked this morning to see some of those.

today's route

Remember those odd highway signs in South Dakota, I think it was, that said "Why Die?"?  Telling people to slow down and drive carefully.  Well, I saw one not far out of last night's state park.  For a minute I thought I'd somehow strayed out of Nebraska into South Dakota until I remembered I was closer to Missouri than to Minnesota.

I passed lots of fields where corn had been harvested, and in one of them I saw a half dozen cows grazing.

I came to the town of Seward, pop. 7,643, and the county seat of Seward County.

Seward County Courthouse
built 1905-07

I looked online to see what that dome is made of, and despite finding a detailed description of this building and its construction, including the small domes you can't see in this internet photo that are on each of the 4 corners, there wasn't a word about the most visible part.

I saw a sign in town that said: "Seward, Alaska 3,447 miles →," which I thought showed a sense of humor.

One of NPR's most popular programs, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," was on - it's taped in Chicago - and they said Chicago had recently been named #1 in the US for its high rat population.  Which, they said, drawing a reasonable inference, showed that the rest of the country is a sinking ship.

I passed through Utica, pop. 861, and Waco, which didn't have a sign but had 296 residents in the 2020 census.  I think I've mentioned before that Nebraska has a real penchant for naming its towns after those in other states, and these three following one after another just prove my point.  Actually, I looked them up and both Utica and Waco were named after the towns in New York and Texas, respectively.  So yeah.

I passed 2 facilities this morning labeled Corteva Agriscience.  After seeing the 2nd one in such a short space, I looked it up and learned it's a publicly traded company that sells seeds, fertilizers, fungicides - you know, farm stuff.

Finally I came to York, which also didn't have a sign but had 7,832 residents.  It too is a county seat, for York County.  I tried to find a photo of this courthouse but the only ones online were of the original, historic version.  I couldn't even find when the new one was built, but it's an uninspiring red brick building that is attractive only for those who prefer brick boxes in the 1970s to 1980s styles.

Gasoline at all stations in York charged $3.39/gallon, compared to most of those in Lincoln that charged $3.64 - a big difference.  Oddly, I didn't see a single grocery store in all of York - or at least the part of York near the main street through town.  They must have them - York is the largest town in the area - but their location is apparently on a need-to-know basis.

Then back to Lincoln on the interstate, where I ran into game day traffic.  Actually, the vehicle traffic wasn't nearly as bad as the pedestrian traffic, because I'd cleverly chosen a route that went very near the stadium, and I didn't know the geography well enough to take an alternate route.

Driving through town, I took the Cornhusker Highway, aka US-6.  I don't know if this is a metaphor for the school or the football team, but it was an extremely bumpy road - hard to drive on and very uncomfortable.

Because of everyone parking at places I'd thought of taking a break in, I couldn't find us a place to stop until we got as far as Waverly, pop. 4,279.  Not even in town, actually, but in desperation I pulled into an unused weigh station just east of town.  At least it gave us a little space for Dext to walk in and for us to have lunch.

We passed Greenwood, pop. 531, and Ashland, pop. 2,453.  After crossing the Platte River and passing Linoma (remember? with the tourist lighthouse?), we came back to Gretna, pop. 4,905.  We passed the campground because I wanted to stop at a grocery store and fill up with gas to get ready for the drive to Iowa in a few days.

At the Fareway grocery, the staff likes to take out your groceries for you (I guess it keeps them from having to retrieve the carts from the parking lot).  The woman who took mine was likely in her 30s and eager to chat.  She told me she'd recently split up with someone, then tried to go back but it didn't feel right.  She said she wanted to feel free enough to fly (and stretched out her arms) and feel joy.  I agreed with her that it was really hard at first, but told her it did get easier and the easier it got the more joy she'd find.  And she hugged me.  You just never know what's going on in the lives around us.

Then back to the KOA for a few days to finish out Nebraska.

Nebraska - Day 28 - in the campground

Pawnee State Recreation Area, Lincoln

Friday, 28 October 2022

I thought this was a cute variation: Jimmy is holding Dexter's paw between his own.

I didn't even try to pick up an internet signal here.  Instead, I spent the day writing drafts of posts I still need to do from the 15th through the 20th of this month.  At David's instruction, I use my computer's word processing program for this.  Even with these drafts there's still a lot of work to do to get them in publishable form, but getting words on paper (so to speak) is usually the hardest part.  So getting 6 posts half done made me feel better about being half a month behind.

It was overcast most of the day and we had rain in the evening.  But Dext and I were able to get some decent walks in.  The thing with camping on a hilltop is that, no matter where we go, we always have to walk uphill to get back home.  But we both need the exercise.

Bucky harassed Lily all day long, beginning with getting her out of bed in the morning.  When it's chilly she likes to sleep with me so she can get under the covers.  I get up before she does and leave her buried there.  Today Bucky climbed on the bed and wandered around until he found her and got her up.

Then later, he climbed up to the top bunk several times and chased her out.  She's not a stand-your-ground kind of cat.  She'll hiss and swat once, and then she'll leave.  I keep telling her to teach him a lesson in the way only she can do, but she doesn't listen to me.

He followed her all over the cabin and attacked her at the water bowl.  He's just acting like a pill (as my momma used to say).

We were besieged by lady bugs.  And they can get into the cabin somehow that I haven't figured out yet.  I like lady bugs just fine in their place, which is a garden, but not at all in my place, which is the RV.  But I'm often able to catch them with my not-patented bug catcher (2 plastic glasses used as a trap) and let them loose outside.

All day I had a really bad pain in the lower left side of my back.  At times I had trouble moving at all from being so stiff and sore.  Eventually I remembered that years ago, I got pains in the right side of my back that I finally diagnosed as being a by-product of tension and stress.  I thought maybe this pain might be the same thing.

And I realized that this is what I do.  Life just got too easy (said my brain) what with having only one adult dog and one adult cat.  We were all used to each other and comfortable with what we were doing.  Too comfortable, apparently.  I still don't think I had much choice about whether to keep the kittens, because I'm certain with a deluge of kittens in Grand Island that Jimmy, with his messed-up eye, would have been euthanized.  They would have had too many healthy kittens to find homes for.  Nonetheless, my life had just gotten too easy, so I had to complicate it.  Standard Operating Procedure.

Knowing that did actually help the pain a bit, though it didn't go away for several days.

Nebraska - Day 27 - Lincoln

Pawnee State Recreation Area, Lincoln

Thursday, 27 October 2022

When I looked at the street view on Google for the Nebraska History Museum, I could see that there were a few parking spaces on the street nearby with meters, but I figured these spaces would go fast as the business day went on, so I wanted to get there early.

The museum opened at 9:00, and Google said it'd take more than an hour to get there on the interstate (which I never seem to go the speed limit on), so I left the Grand Island campground before 7:30.

today's highway route

some of today's route through Lincoln

I heard on Morning Edition (public radio) that the disease RSV is targeting more than just kids.  From earlier reports it sounded like pediatric hospitals were getting slammed with cases of this respiratory illness, but today they said it actually hits anybody who's vulnerable, which also includes older people - especially those who already have respiratory illnesses (such as asthma).

Online information (which may or may not be accurate) says RSV and the flu and Covid are all similar, are all respiratory illnesses, and may be coming in full force this winter.  As one doctor put it: "It's like RSV took a two year sabbatical, was working out twice a day, meditating, eating well, and is now back and showing off."

Lots of doctors have commented for months about the low rate of flu last year because of everybody wearing masks and taking Covid precautions.  Well, most people are no longer taking Covid precautions and the viruses are still around.  Yet another reason for me to keep wearing masks in indoor spaces.

Driving into town I saw a sign that said: "Lincoln: Birthplace and Home of Weird Wally."  Which meant nothing but confusion to someone like me who's not from here.  But I looked it up and learned that he was a well-known and well-liked and respected used car salesman.  Here's a sample of what I found.   https://www.1011now.com/Remembering-Weird-Wally

I got to the museum about 15 minutes early, which turned out to be a good thing, not only because I wanted to walk Dext but also because the parking meters didn't want to acknowledge my existence.  Or rather, that of my credit card.  For one thing, they were very tall parking meters and I had to stand on tip-toe just to see the screen.  They were the kind that will take either quarters or a credit card, and I didn't have quarters so I tried my card.  The meters kept telling me my card was invalid - probably because I needed to get a different angle on the in-and-out-of-the-slot process.  (My RV takes 1½ spaces, so I'm on the hook for 2 parking meters.)

But I got lucky.  There was a Chase bank back-to-back with the museum, so when it opened I ran in with some dollar bills and got quarters, which the meters took.  I went back to the bank after I'd visited the museum because I needed more gas money from my account.  But at least I got to park.

The Nebraska History Museum has 3 floors.  The top floor had an exhibit about women's suffrage, because 2020 was the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.  What I learned in the museum was that Nebraskans had been trying unsuccessfully for more than 60 years to get women the right to vote in the state.  I spent about half my time on this floor, and these first photos are from those exhibits.

First, a vocabulary lesson:

I don't think I knew this.

And the introduction:

Racism as well as sexism limited citizens' access to voting.

see explanation below

Small victories:

There were 2 rounds in the battle for full suffrage in Nebraska.  Here's the first fight.

If at first you don't succeed . . .

This is the first page from the voter pamphlet.
Text and second page enlarged below.

Second page.
Text enlarged below.

And here's what the opposition sounded like.

And here was the result:

see explanation below

The Nebraska legislature was willing to ratify the 19th amendment, though it hadn't been willing to pass similar legislation for its own citizens.

League of Women Voters
at their 2nd annual convention in 1921.

Voting rights today:

Most, though not all, states allow
voter registration online.
I see Texas is not on this list.

This shows the results of a poll taken of
visitors to the museum.

From there I went downstairs to the 2nd floor where they had a dual show: state history & photos from an exhibit titled "National Geographic's Women: A Century of Change."

First, the history.

Nebraska's legislature has only 1 house.

A sort of explanation for the "the good life" sign I saw
when I first entered the state.

These are only a few of the artifacts they had on display.

I didn't know Vise-Grips were invented here.

Or Kool-Aid either.

The stamps on this envelope prove it
traveled by Pony Express.

Charter of the Nebraska
Farmers' Alliance.

I don't know why, but it never occurred to me
that phone booths would have been segregated.
But of course  they were.

And these from the National Geographic exhibit are a few of the photos taken around the world that show various qualities, along with explanations for each.

Just try not to smile when you look at these photos.

These next two showing strength have multiple layers.

This photo doesn't show what you think it does.
See explanation below.

And this next one, to me, shows both qualities:

What the photographer did.

I had a hard time getting a photo without the glare,
and I ended up not being able to show
the faces of the men in the car next to this one.
But see the explanation above.

The exhibition included photos of a number of well-known women with information about them.  This is one of those.

Gloria Allred

The following photo was in a section about photographic techniques, but I thought the subject matter showed strength very clearly.

See explanation below of what and where this photo is about.

The 1st floor of the museum had displays about the state's archaeology.  But I'd already used up most of the time I had on the parking meters, and I'd already visited fossil sites in the state.  They had a skeleton of a huge mastodon (well, no mastodon was small, but it seemed even huger seeing it put together) in the lobby of the museum, which I gawked at.  The skeleton was from Wisconsin, but they'd found mastodon bones in Nebraska as well.  Anyway, I figured I didn't need to see more fossils and called it a day at the museum.

From there, I tried hard to get a photo of the state capitol, which was a few blocks away, but I could only get it in pieces.

Here's the upper part.

And here's the lower part.
The base is absolutely massive - taking
up an entire large city block just
with the building (the lawns weren't large).

Here's an internet photo of the two
pieces put together, though you can
see it doesn't even begin to include all
the base.

Online I learned that there are actually 4 courtyards inside that exterior.  The tower is 400' tall, topped with a 19' statue called "The Sower," as in planting seeds.  That's actually an interesting-looking figure and I'm attaching a pdf that shows it.   https://capitol.nebraska.gov/sower

The capitol was built in 4 stages, between 1922 and 1932, and it came in under budget and was entirely paid for when it was finished.  Those were the days.  A product of its time, both the building and the sculpture are at least partly Art Deco.  It was very impressive.

I did a lot of driving around town, going to various places.  Lincoln has a whole lot of one-way streets, which I'm sure helps the traffic pattern but is tough for a visitor to navigate.  

I'm sorry I wasn't able to make time for the International Quilt Museum, shown below.  Something else for my next-visit list.

International Quilt Museum

I drove by the University of Nebraska campus - very attractive.

I was on my way to a Uhaul dealer who, I'd been assured when I called yesterday, sold propane for RVs.  But when I got there, they said they only fill individual tanks, and for my RV I'd have to go to Lee's Propane, back some miles the way I'd come.  At least they were nice enough to give me the address.  I wish I'd known when I first came into town.  But it was getting chilly at nights and I was down to only a quarter of a tank, so I had to go.

First, though, I stopped at Pentzer Park, which I'd found on one of Google's maps.  It turned out to be a small neighborhood park next to the local Salvation Army headquarters.  I keep not being able to have a pleasant walk with Dext because he persists in eating things when we're out.  I have no idea what he's putting in his mouth and often think he's sniffing when it suddenly turns to grabbing.  I had the sour apple spray with me, but Dext's mouth was already busy before I realized it, and the directions said to keep the spray out of his eyes so I didn't want to spray his mouth (which I thought of).  So I was left with cutting the walk short at that point, even though that doesn't seem to be getting the message across.

In many places around town I saw signs in Arabic and Vietnamese for stores and services.  Nebraska - or at least Lincoln - has clearly moved beyond the German immigrant experience I saw in the museum.

We went to a PetsMart, because I still didn't have bowls for the kitties.

I drove through town to get to the propane and saw lots of signs saying I was on the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway.  I don't remember hearing about this, and oddly the explanation I found was on an Iowa website.   https://iowadot.gov/dldhighway

From Lincoln I drove only about 10 more miles to tonight's state park.  This was the first one I've visited that had a frequent presence by park rangers, which I found reassuring.

My campsite was on a hilltop, which was nice, but it wasn't level.  I thought about changing sites and cleared it with one of the rangers, but I finally decided it wasn't so bad it was worth moving for.  I was tired when we got in, and once we were settled, I was done.

All the campsites had concrete pads, which was nice, and a good half of them had dogs, which was tolerable now that I've got only the one dog.

There weren't all that many people here tonight, but the tags on the campsites showed almost all of them had been reserved for the weekend.  University of Nebraska home football game coming up.